EARTHLIFE GARDEN MATE 22KG

Earthlife Garden Mate is a 100% natural soil and plant conditioner designed to improve soil structure, moisture management, nutrient availability and biological activity. It contains more than 60 mineral elements, including rare earth minerals and plant-available silica, natural rock phosphate, and more than 30 beneficial soil microbes and fungi.

What Garden Mate does

Garden Mate is designed to work across all soil types, including difficult clay and sandy soils.

• Clay soils: Helps break down compacted and hard clay, improving water penetration, drainage and aeration. Earthlife states that noticeable improvement can occur within approximately 2–3 weeks under suitable conditions.
• Sandy soils: Helps bind soil particles and reduce the leaching of moisture and nutrients, improving moisture availability around plant roots.
• General soil conditioning: Helps improve soil structure, moisture holding capacity, nutrient cycling and the environment around plant roots.
• Biological activity: Its mineral and microbial content encourages beneficial soil biology and earthworm activity, which can contribute to nutrient availability.

Typical analysis

Earthlife lists the following typical analysis for Garden Mate:

Element	Typical amount
Phosphate	1.4%
Potassium	1.1%
Calcium	13.0%
Magnesium	3.7%
Silica	36.0%
Sulphate	1.0%
Iron	3.0%
Other micronutrients	60+

Using Garden Mate for planting

Garden Mate can be used when establishing vegetable gardens, flower beds, shrubs, trees, fruit trees, lawns and pot plants. Earthlife recommends using it during planting, transplanting and repotting to help establish a stronger root system and improve the growing environment.

For new garden beds, Earthlife recommends conditioning the soil preferably 3–4 weeks before planting. For established plants, it can be spread around the plant, out towards the drip line, and watered in.

Application rates

Earthlife's current recommendations are:

• General conditioning: 100 g/m²
• Most planting situations: 300 g/m²
• Problem soils/areas: 500 g/m²
• Heavy clay or very sandy soil: 1–2 kg/m²
• Repotting: 25 g per litre of potting mix

How often to apply

For general garden maintenance, Earthlife recommends applying Garden Mate approximately every 3–4 months, with additional applications where necessary.

Other benefits

Garden Mate is:

• Suitable for Australian native plants
• Suitable for existing gardens, new gardens, trees, pot plants and lawns
• Suitable for use around planting and transplanting
• Able to be spread over mulch or bark
• Designed not to burn foliage or root hairs
• Intended to help stabilise soil pH
• An allowable input for organic growers
• Vegan friendly, according to Earthlife.